Snow Woman

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Kirstilä emptied his Kozel and waved to the bartender for another. Obviously he was a regular, because the waitress brought his glass to the table and said she’d put it on his tab. The poet downed a quarter of the pint before speaking.

  “I guess I got the days wrong. It must have been Wednesday when we went out drinking,” he said hesitantly.

  “So how did your Christmas actually go?” I asked. “You came back from Hämeenlinna to say hi to Elina or something?”

  “Yeah. I missed her.”

  Kirstilä brushed his thick hair away from his face and pulled a crumpled cigarette pack out of his pocket. The last cigarette was almost broken in half. He had a hard time getting the match lit, and finally I grabbed the box and did it for him. The cigarette smoke nauseated me even more than usual, and I turned away quickly. A little incidental second-hand smoke wasn’t going to hurt my baby, and I couldn’t exactly wrap myself in plastic for nine months.

  “Christmas always makes me maudlin,” Kirstilä said. “All the family nonsense and peace on earth and goodwill toward men. It felt kind of stupid to spend Christmas with my parents and my sister when I don’t even like them, and the only person I really cared about was seventy miles away. I called Elina that night and asked her to come over to my place. She said she couldn’t because she had something to do, so I suggested I come to Rosberga. I had to take a taxi, but Elina promised to pay.”

  Elina met Kirstilä at the gate. Her head cold was horrible, but she’d told him she wanted to get out of the house for a while, to “air out her brain.” Kirstilä got the impression that Elina’s Christmas had turned out to be unexpectedly exhausting.

  “I started talking crazy. It was probably all the sentimental Christmas nonsense that made me say it. I asked Elina to move in with me, but she said no. She said she was at a place in her life where she couldn’t even think about making any big changes.”

  That fit with Milla’s story. But how did Aira get it into her head that Joona Kirstilä was going to leave Elina? It sounded like the opposite.

  “So Elina wanted to continue your relationship the way it was?” I emptied my glass and immediately wanted another. Well, not really. I wanted a real beer. But my superego wouldn’t hear of it.

  “Yeah. We ended up fighting about it. I thought Elina would be pleased that I couldn’t stand being away from her on Christmas. Childish. It’s just . . . I mean it was so damn hard with Elina living so far away and always having a house full of women. What if I just wanted to see her some night when we didn’t have plans? What was I supposed to do then?” Kirstilä pursed his lips, and his expression reminded me of my two-year-old nephew, Saku, when his mother told him he couldn’t have something he wanted. “I shouldn’t’ve complained. Now I don’t have Elina at all . . .” Kirstilä started crying, tears dripping into his beer.

  “How did you get back to Helsinki if the buses weren’t running? By taxi?”

  “No, I stayed the night in the little house. I didn’t leave until morning,” Kirstilä said tiredly, wiping his eyes.

  “What? You were at Rosberga all night?”

  “Yes. That’s the horrible thing about it all.” Kirstilä’s eyes teared up again. “Elina didn’t want me to stay. She wanted me to take a taxi back to the city. Finally she gave in, but she said she wanted a night to herself because she was so sick. I waited until one o’clock in case she came back anyway.”

  “Did you hear anything that night?”

  “No. I fell asleep after emptying a bottle of wine I found in the cupboard.”

  My bus would be arriving shortly, and the next one wasn’t for an hour. I felt bad leaving Kirstilä alone, but I had to go. Standing up, I saw that a pretty young woman at the next table appeared to have recognized him and kept glancing over. Maybe he would find comfort sooner than he thought.

  But apparently Kirstilä wasn’t finished yet. “We parted on slightly cool terms,” he whispered, wiping his face with his red scarf. “I called her at one o’clock, just before I finished the wine and fell asleep, but she said she couldn’t talk to me because she was in the middle of a conversation with someone. And in the morning”—Kirstilä swallowed—“in the morning I was so pissed off that Elina hadn’t come back that I took the first bus into town. Now all I do is wonder. If I’d pushed and demanded to be with her, she would still be alive.” Kirstilä’s last sentence dissolved into sobbing.

  I’d been pulling on my coat as he spoke but now I stood frozen. “With who?” I almost shouted. “Who was Elina talking to?” All of the women in the house had denied seeing Elina again after she came back from her evening walk.

  “She just said she’d tell me later because it had to do with me too. She sounded sort of like . . . like she was drunk. But I guess by then I was too.”

  I had to rush to my bus, so I told Kirstilä I’d interview him again later in the week. So Elina hadn’t been alone that night! Which meant that one of the Rosberga women was lying.

  There was no way I could break away and get to Rosberga Manor the next day. I had inherited a couple of cases from Palo, and although I was trying to concentrate on them, I still found my mind wandering. Suddenly I was in Nuuksio again, near the cabin surrounded by trees, listening to the noise of helicopters and gunshots, all ending in dead silence. At lunch I sat with Pihko, and when we returned to our department, I asked to see Palo’s office.

  The desk was exactly as before except Palo’s messy case notes had been taken away and redistributed to the rest of us. A thick, dark-blue cardigan hung from the back of Palo’s chair. When I touched it, I smelled the scent of his cough drops and deodorant.

  “Every morning when I come to work I’m surprised he isn’t here,” Pihko said softly. “His wife is supposed to pick up that stuff tomorrow. I just hope Lähde doesn’t move Ström in here next.”

  “We have to get a replacement,” I said. “When are they opening up the position? One of my friends is taking the NCO course right now. You don’t know Pekka Koivu, do you? He’d fit in great. I worked with him in Helsinki.”

  My friend and former partner Pekka Koivu had left Joensuu and its race brawls behind and was currently sitting in a classroom just a few miles away taking a course for noncommissioned officer candidates. We’d been talking about going out for a beer after Christmas, but of course there wasn’t time for that now. When Koivu called after hearing about the Malmberg incident, I got the feeling he had a new girl up to bat.

  Pihko’s phone rang. To our mutual surprise, it was Taskinen, who apparently needed me in his office ASAP. In his office I discovered the Espoo chief of police, with whom I’d never had the honor of speaking. I was sure they wanted to talk about the schedule for the preliminary investigation into the hostage drama. Taskinen motioned for me to sit but avoided my eyes, instead staring past me as if some new, fascinating painting had appeared on the wall above my left ear.

  “Sergeant Kallio, I just received an extremely testy phone call from someone high up in the Ministry of the Interior,” the chief of police began. He was nearly at retirement age, and I’d heard that he rose through the ranks like a meteor during the Kekkonen years. Back in those days, when the Soviet Union still cast a long shadow, plenty of cops were willing to look the other way if the price was right. The strain of lunch meetings spent greasing palms and sauna nights at exclusive seaside villas boozing it up with corrupt politicians was visible in the chief’s stout frame and the broken blood vessels of his face. His expensive-looking dark-blue suit only served to accentuate the impression of banality. You didn’t buy suits like that on a policeman’s salary. Internal Affairs investigations had come close to him several times, but the police chief’s reputation was still miraculously intact. Some thought that might have something to do with the current minister of the interior also having been one of President Kekkonen’s young protégés and an old friend of the chief. I imagined that the big shot at the m
inistry who’d called was none other than Interior Minister Martti Sahala.

  “I’m assuming it has to do with the Nuuksio hostage incident,” I said crossly. Was the minister of the interior now going to tell us what to say in our interviews?

  “No, it had nothing to do with the Nuuksio incident, although there will certainly be plenty to say about that when the time comes. This was in regard to the unexplained death that also happened in Nuuksio a couple of weeks ago. As I remember, the name of the victim was Elina Rosberg.”

  I was taken aback. “Why was the Interior Ministry calling about that?”

  “The minister demanded that you stop groundlessly threatening witnesses with arrest,” the chief said.

  “What?” I suddenly realized that it had to be about Tarja Kivimäki and our altercation the previous evening. But what did that have to do with the minister of the interior?

  “I assume you remember your conversation with the reporter Tarja Kivimäki last night at a restaurant called Raffaello? You threatened to arrest her unless she came in for an interview at a time you dictated unilaterally.”

  “Sergeant Kallio has been through a lot lately. It’s completely understandable if she got upset,” Taskinen said. He still wasn’t looking at me. I had never seen such intense embarrassment on anyone’s face. Taskinen and the chief of police had clashed over several white-collar crime investigations during the past year, and from what I’d heard, their relationship had gone from cold to frigid.

  “If Miss—excuse me—Mrs. Kallio is incapable of discharging her duties properly, she should take some sick leave,” said the chief.

  “Tarja Kivimäki tried to bribe me. She promised to reveal a motive for Elina Rosberg’s murder if I gave her an interview for her TV program. She admitted to concealing crucial evidence in a homicide investigation. What was I was supposed to do?” I asked.

  As I stared at the police chief’s multiple chins, I remembered what Tarja Kivimäki had said about her change of employment: ethical considerations had made working as a political reporter difficult. Was the name of one of those “ethical considerations” Minister Martti Sahala? What the hell did Tarja Kivimäki see in him? The man was a five-and-a-half-foot sound-bite machine who’d grown up surrounded by potato fields. Was it the power that turned her on? Sahala had been called the shadow prime minister more than once. He wasn’t much over forty, but he had already been on the national political scene for almost two decades and had held three ministerial portfolios.

  “You aren’t a little girl anymore, Mrs. Kallio,” replied the chief. “A police officer needs the eye of a psychologist. Sometimes small concessions can be useful.”

  I counted five police chief chins before I lost the battle to keep my mouth shut. “Don’t the same rules apply to Interior Ministry mistresses as the rest of us?”

  I should have known that would be too much for the police chief. The screaming fit was pretty dramatic. The content of it was more or less that I should ask for some time off before he gave me a permanent holiday. Taskinen and I sat like two cowed children who had managed to burn down the family sauna playing with matches.

  “Jyrki, I trust in the future you’ll take more responsibility for your subordinates’ tact,” the police chief finally snapped. He didn’t shake our hands before rolling out the door, slamming it behind him.

  Taskinen looked at me for the first time and took a deep breath. “OK, now tell me what this is all about.”

  I tried to keep my cool as I told him, but I saw that my irritation was infecting him too.

  “Kivimäki must have been really offended to put such big wheels in motion,” he said after hearing my version.

  “That woman is going to be here at ten on Thursday or else. I know how to play this game too,” I said. “The tabloids would just love to hear about a government minister shielding his mistress from a murder investigation!”

  “Maria, calm down! Don’t make your life any harder than it already is.”

  “If Kivimäki really does have something to tell us about the motive for Rosberg’s murder, I’m going to squeeze it out of her even if it means going through the high heels Martti Sahala keeps in his closet for special occasions.” My rage dissolved into giggles, which only worsened at the thought of how Martti Sahala would look stripped to his skivvies during an assignation.

  Taskinen watched me giggle hysterically for a few seconds and then grabbed a bottle of mineral water from his cabinet. “Drink that and try to get a hold of yourself. Are you sure you don’t need more time off?”

  “Of course I do,” I said once I was able to speak. “So do you and Pihko. And I want to vomit just thinking about the chief. But don’t worry. I’m not going to lose it. I’m taking the night train to Oulu, and I promise to behave myself. And when I get back on Thursday morning, Tarja Kivimäki will be waiting for me here.”

  “Without you doing anything?”

  “Exactly. I think she’s aware that she can’t afford not to come, despite her bigwig boyfriend.”

  Taskinen looked as if he almost believed me. I wished I did. Marching to my office, I tried to pick up the pieces of my day, but even staring at Geir Moen’s leg muscles didn’t help. I had to force myself to dial Elina Rosberg’s lawyer’s number.

  The will didn’t contain anything in particular. There were a few bequests to organizations like the Finnish Feminist Association and the Red Cross Disaster Fund. Otherwise all the property would go to Aira Rosberg. Joona Kirstilä didn’t even rank a mention.

  I hadn’t really expected to find a mysterious heir, but I was still disappointed. At least my conversations with Kivimäki and Kirstilä had kept alive my hope of making progress with the case. At the same time the skeptic in the back of my mind reminded me that Kirstilä might be lying about Elina’s late-night visitor just to turn suspicion away from himself and that the motive Kivimäki had promised might be a hoax.

  I called Rosberga Manor, and to my good fortune Johanna answered.

  “Hi, it’s Maria Kallio from the Espoo Police. How did your visit home go?”

  “Thank you, well. I got back yesterday. I could hardly stand to leave the children once I got to see them. Only Johannes, my oldest boy, stayed away.”

  “Did you see your husband?” I asked.

  “No. He and Johannes were at Leevi’s parents’ place the whole time I was home. If I just had a place to live, I would’ve taken the children away with me right then, at least the smallest ones.”

  “How long do you intend to stay at Rosberga?”

  “Aira promised I can stay here until I get things worked out. I need to find a job and an apartment, although I think that’ll take a miracle.”

  What was Johanna living on now? Where was she getting money? Had Elina lent her some?

  “Elina’s body still hasn’t been turned over to us. Aira needs to organize the funeral,” Johanna continued.

  I’d forgotten that too. Palo’s death had screwed up a lot of things.

  “Maria, I found out that Leevi wasn’t home on Boxing Day. He told everyone he was going somewhere to give a sermon.” Johanna’s voice was agitated. It occurred to me that Elina could have gone out for walks with Kirstilä and Leevi Säntti, although that didn’t seem likely.

  “That’s why I called you. I’m going to talk to Leevi tomorrow.”

  “What? Are you going to arrest him?” Johanna breathed.

  “There’s no reason for that yet. But I do intend to talk to him. Thank you for your autobiography, by the way. It was interesting, but I think a couple of pages were missing.”

  “That stuff from when I was in school doesn’t have anything to do with my situation now.”

  I felt two-faced talking with Johanna as a friend. Of course I wasn’t going halfway to the Arctic Circle just to check on Leevi Säntti’s movements. I was also going there to ask about Johanna. There wa
s something so strange and unhinged about Elina Rosberg’s death, I had a sense that at least one person involved was mentally disturbed. Johanna was a perfect fit for that role.

  The phone rang again. It was the officer at the desk downstairs. I had a visitor. “He says he doesn’t have an appointment. His name is Kari Hanninen, and he’s a therapist. Do you want me to send him up?”

  I didn’t have the time or energy, but Hanninen was a good excuse to go get some coffee. I said I’d come down and get him. In the elevator, I looked at myself in the mirror: my eyes looked green-black from exhaustion, my skin was paler than ever, and the winter had wiped the freckles from my nose. My hair could have used a new bottle of red dye. Under my green sweater, my breasts looked bigger, but the waist of my jeans didn’t feel tight. Almost the opposite.

  Hanninen’s cowboy boots, Levi’s 501s, and black bandanna tied around his neck only added to the aging rock star effect. When he saw me, it was as if he hit an internal charm button: a new glint flashed in his coffee-colored eyes, his mouth with its thin upper lip spread into a wide smile, and laugh lines filled his cheeks and the corners of his eyes.

  “Sergeant Kallio. I’m so happy you had time to see me. I happened to be driving by and stopped in to see how you were doing. You said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “I need a cup of coffee,” I said. “We can talk in the cafeteria.”

  Hanninen followed me, then pulled out my chair as though we were on a date. I wasn’t used to that kind of treatment, at least not at work. Here I was just one of the boys and carried my own gear and put on my own coat.

  We talked about Malmberg first. Hanninen was angry about what had happened, and I had heard from colleagues that he’d used some pretty strong language about the police in interviews. I wasn’t surprised, knowing he’d genuinely cared what happened to Malmberg, even if he’d unwittingly made the situation worse.